Primary Navigation

A recent event at Stanford raised the question of what good ethics courses do, with a particular focus on the question of whether such courses can and should make students more moral. Tamar Schapiro, Barbara Fried, and Benoit Monin (all Stanford) were the featured participants, and you can view their talks and the following discussion here. What is the job of the mo..

Kenny Easwaran, currently at the University of Southern California, has accepted an offer as associate professor with tenure at Texas A&M, starting Fall 2014. Easwaran works on formal epistemology, decision theory, and philosophy of math.

“Even if you found D.J, has the ability to communicate, you can’t overturn 20 years of his being determined to be incompetent,” Teare said during the hearing to gauge D.J.’s ability to communicate. “He does not have the ability to give consent.”

As reported yesterday, owing to accusations of repeatedly sexually molesting a man with cerebral-palsy, Anna Stubblefield has been placed on administrative leave without pay from her position as chair of the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers-Newark (Rafaella De Rosa is the acting chair of the department; Stubblefield does not appear on the list of faculty in the d..

5. An Italian philosopher who had been jailed for nine years for violating a fascist-era anti-gay law prohibiting what this article calls “plagiarism” (“in Italy a concept and a crime of unduly influencing and thus ‘stealing’ a person’s personality”–anyone know anything about this?) has died.

9. Peter Stone reviews the latest collection of G.A. Cohen’s essays, Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy. It includes a great description of Cohen’s strengths as a philosopher from Jonathan Wolff’s “G.A. Cohen: a Memoir,” the final essay in the book.

The inaugural issue of the academic journal Porn Studies is out, and it’s a big one, by which I mean it is a double issue. Not that size matters. The publisher, Taylor & Francis, has made the entire contents free to download, and after a cursory inspection I can report two things my readership probably wants to know: (1) it seems to be entirely SFW, and (2) it seems..

Mark LeBar, currently professor of philosophy at Ohio University, has accepted a senior appointment at Florida State University, beginning January 2015. Professor LeBar works in moral, social, and political philosophy, as well as ancient philosophy.

Massimiliano Cappuccio, an assistant professor of philosophy at United Arab Emirates University, has received a grant for over $100,000 for “examining the theory of ‘the choking effect’ – when less experienced athletes crumble under pressure – and looking for ways to overcome this.” Details here.

Ruth Chang (Rutgers) is interviewed at 3am Magazine. Apart from a good discussion of her work on incomparability, the interview also includes some thoughts from Chang on sexual harassment in philosophy. Here’s one excerpt:

It’s not that we have to blog about it or call up the victim, whomever we might believe him/her to be, but even casual remarks to colleagues in a ..

Philosophy Talk, the philosophy radio show hosted by John Perry and Ken Taylor, is seeking help. “After 10 years of getting roughly 80% of our financial support from Stanford University, Philosophy Talk can no longer count on that level of support from the University.” They have introduced a funding program called “Community of Thinkers” that gives donors special pe..